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When your catalog of fishing lures includes products like the Lot Lizard, Dirty Diaper Crappie King, Angel Dust Wet Rocket, Cajun Sweet Corn Crappie King, Drama Queen Wet Rocket, and Hulk Urine Magic Shad, it is safe to say your company — and its customers — may be of a Different Breed.
And no, that’s not a typo — you can actually buy a product called the Hulk Urine Magic Shad.
According to owner Josh Breedlove, this clever and catchy naming trend is absolutely by design.
… and if the past year is any indication, that design certainly seems to be paying off!
Starting a Fishing Tackle Company
Like so many individuals involved in the fishing industry, Breedlove has been a lifelong angler. Where his story deviates from most, however, is in the fact that he also grew up making his own lures.
After attending college to study Conservation Law, Breedlove ultimately found that the field was not his passion. With time, he opted to return to a previous love and in 2019, he founded Different Breed Lures.
As the second company Breedlove has owned, his namesake fishing tackle brand has found rapid success due to a simple-but-effective philosophical approach.
“We’re not just trying to sell lures,” Breedlove said. “We are looking to build a family and a culture around the product.”
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Building a Family, a Culture, and a Unique Catalog
Despite only being in business for a little over one year, Different Breed Lures has amassed a respectable and active following on social media.
Offering both crappie and bass tackle, including soft plastics, jig heads, and a bottle labelled Slab Slobber Scent, Breedlove says much of the inspiration for his product’s clever naming comes from the community his company has built.
When a new prototype is released, Breedlove will often take to the Different Breed Lures Facebook page to field naming suggesting from his customer base. If someone happens to strike gold with a suggestion, there’s a healthy incentive attached.
“Whoever comes up with the best name, we give them the first one hundred products off the presses,” said Breedlove.
Likewise, the company has also published a 2020 calendar with photos of impressive bass and crappie caught on Different Breed lures.
Breedlove cites the example of established crappie fishing brands like the Bobby Garland series (Electric Chicken, BBQ Chicken, Monkey Milk, and Sweet Tea with Lemon are some popular products) as his inspiration for adopting a similar naming convention.
“The majority of colors are popular because of the name,” Breedlove explains. He certainly stands by the quality of his products, heralding the Crappie King series as the real backbone of the company, but understands that a witty pairing of names and colors certainly doesn’t hurt the bottom line.
Rapid Growth, Unexpected Setbacks, and a Look Down the Road
For Breedlove, who started this project in Indiana, an unfortunate series of events has slowed down the rapid trajectory his company was experiencing.
After suffering a significant injury, he opted to relocate temporarily with family in the Jacksonville, Florida area. The setback temporarily stifled production, with Different Breed selling out of its pre-made inventory.
More recently, with concerns surrounding COVID-19 affecting practically every industry, enterprise, and entity in the United States, a circuit of fishing expos Breedlove planned to attend has also been effectively placed on the back burner for the remainder of 2020.
That said, given the relatively short lifespan of the company thus far, Different Breed Lures maintains a healthy distribution through both its online store and retailers across the nation.
“We’ve got the products in around one hundred shops nationwide and almost every state,” said Breedlove, who lists Maine as the only exception in the continental United States.
Moving forward, Breedlove hopes to eventually establish a permanent location (possibly around South Carolina) with both a larger production area as well as a physical shop where customers can buy products from the Different Breed catalog as well as make their own custom jigs.
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